Welcome to the webpage of the research group "QÜESTRAM, Qualitat en la determinació de contaminants prioritaris i avaluació de llur comportament" (2021 SGR 01342). 

The group "Quality in the determination of priority pollutants and evaluation of their behaviour, QÜESTRAM", was funded and considered as a consolidated group uninterruptedly from the first Catalan Research Plan in 1993, which also includes the last SGR call (2017 SGR 907). Most of the current members were already part of the previous SGR group either as research personnel or as training personnel. Over the years, and due to the different specializations of its members or due to postdoctoral training in prestigious research institutions, all the PhD members of the group have developed their own but complementary trajectories, always in the field of analytical chemistry, often within interdisciplinary studies in the field of environmental protection and food safety. The QÜESTRAM group maintains a balance between consolidated research and transfer activities, in which it has gained international prestige, and emerging activities, in which it aims to develop new lines and face new challenges and scientific objectives. As described in the following figure, the group will face up to five consolidated but also innovative scientific challenges, which are internally related among them and expected to be further developed along the three years of duration of the project.

• Challenge 1. Fill gaps to assure data traceability and quality in food safety and environmental protection

• Challenge 2. Developing and applying new materials for radioactivity measurements

• Challenge 3. Implementing analytical methods and technologies to complex scenarios affected by pollutants

• Challenge 4. Adcquiring and deriving data for predictive modelling in environmental risk assessment

• Challenge 5. Viability of reusing carbon-rich materials for the remediation of contaminated waters and soils

The following figure relates the definition of group itself with the main challenges defining its activities, as well as its relationship with support units. The challenges that drive the activities of the group aim at solving problems related to quality and traceable data, determination of priority pollutants (with a specific focus on radionuclides) and the evaluation of the environmental behaviour and mobility of pollutants of different nature and design of related remediation strategies.